It’s one of those days where you wake up and you don’t want to leave your bed. Netflix, chips and zero human contact. You just want to lay in bed and watch that TV series that completely absorbs you, again. Turning off your brain is a great way to avoid the scary thoughts. Am I doing this right ? Is this who am I now ? Some average guy in an average job doing living a life totally uneventful ?

I love Regular Show. It’s a cartoon that tells the adventures of Mordecai and Rigby, two animals that work in a park and in every episode they are just slacking off to the point where something magical happens. It’s a kids show with a lot of teenager/adult jokes and I love it.

I’m not talking about depression issues. I’m talking about how we never stop ourselves to think reflexively about our decisions yet at the same time we expect to run our lives in the best possible way.

People usually listen ideas that they already believe. It’s very difficult to change your behavior while some ideas are so integrated with your life. With politics and religion is very easy pick sides because that ideas don’t necessarily reflect your personal choices. Many genocides had a strong catholic faith, let alone priests who are pederasts and don’t get me started on politicians. But what about money, family, career and relationships ? Well, things are not that clear. I’m a firm believer that everyone is trying to figure it out. Improvising along the way and trying to do our best with what we have around.

Sometimes we have an OK period. It’s not great but also not bad. Like wearing someone else’s clothes, we don’t feel perfectly comfortable with it yet it fills the purpose of giving us enough to do what we really like. What attitude should we adopt with these periods ? Should we be the person that tries to make the most of the present, accepting what we have been given, trying to settle and looking to be happier ? or should we think of it as a temporal state, a stage that we have to beat in order to get to the next level, to obtain that dream job or live the dream ?

When your mind is battling between crippling self doubt and almost narcissist thoughts is indeed scary. I’m never really sure of what to do next.

Of all the hobbies I’ve tried: playing football, playing guitar, practicing keyboard, writing, drawing and painting, Photography is the one I can feel as my own. One thing that irritates me of all the activities with some creative element -like writing or drawing- is that in order to improve and feel better doing them is that you have to express yourself. “let the inner voice come out and do the work”, “connect with your feelings”, “let yourself go” or something like that is repeated multiple times on the internet as a way to overcome the difficulties of the beginner.

But what if -and for me this is a big deal- I tried very hard to communicate my thoughts and feelings and in the end, every time I found myself with nothing to say to others.

I figured that if I don’t have anything to say -or it is very difficult for me to express- I might as well just capture what the world actually is and share that with others. As simple as that. At first I considered video, but I think it’s basically storytelling and that is too difficult for me.

From 0 to a hard drive full of pictures

I bought a Sony a6000. It’s light and reasonably priced. It’s a mirrorless, which means that you can change the lens and it comes with a big sensor but not as quite as big as a high end DSLR.

The thing about this camera is that it is fun. You can take it everywhere and start shooting and at the very first moment you notice that it’s is a leap in quality compared to the one that comes with the iPhone. Because it’s light you can shoot all day long. I don’t own a camera bag. The camera with the kit lens fits in your pocket so you can blend in anywhere and just take it off when you are about to shoot.

I have taken thousands of picture and I would say just 100 are kinda good. The bad ones you can tell they have bad composition, bad lightning, improper settings in the camera, too much post processing, poor use of flash, too much depth of field, or are just plain boring. The good ones, on the other hand, are publicly praised.

I really like that. It’s so different from other hobbies where it can takes years before your work can be enjoyed by yourself and other people.